Servicing of television equipment is greatly facilitated by observing on an oscilloscope the wave forms present at various locations in the overall circuit. While triggered sweep oscilloscopes are particularly useful for this purpose they are not used extensively because the average television serviceman is not skilled in their use and, moreover, substantial time is required to set up the triggered sweeps for any particular application. For television servicing the oscilloscope must first of all be easy to operate and secondly the set up time must be short. Most triggered sweep oscilloscopes now on the market have neither of these necessary characteristics. While they have substantial flexibility and wide application they are essentially laboratory instruments requiring considerable skill to operate. Moreover, they are inherently slow to set up and are easily misadjusted. Even those oscilloscopes which have been designed primarily for television servicing cannot be operated by many servicemen who are untrained in the operation of triggered sweep oscilloscopes but are otherwise capable of servicing television equipment.
There is, therefore, a need for a triggered sweep oscilloscope which may be easily and quickly used by television service personnel for observing those waveforms normally encountered in television servicing. Rapid and precise switching from one triggered sweep to another should be simple and not require the operator to physically move from one place to another for setting up the most frequently used sweeps. For example, the use of rotary selector switches should be minimized because of the need for closely observing the dial while making the sweep selections. Also, all of the controls should be at the front of the instrument where they can be easily reached and observed and so that the instrument can be mounted on a shelf above the service bench.